Speaker: Caleb Schrock-Hurst
Bible Passages: Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Summary: Baptism is one of the most important rites of the church, and it has been interpreted in a variety of ways through church history. How should we view baptism today? What can we gather from the early Anabaptists, for whom baptism was so important?
Good morning everyone!
I want to start today with a joke about the Greek from our passage — apologies for my nerdiness! For this joke to make sense, you need to know that in Greek — as in many languages, the word for ‘pigeon’ and ‘dove’ are interchangeable, even though in English we see doves as beautiful symbols of peace and love, and pigeons as nuisances and pests.
Needless to say, when we translated this passage in my seminary Greek class, my professor, former Mennonite World Conference president Nancy Heisey, was totally un-impressed when I translated a verse from our passage as: ‘after Jesus was baptized, the heavens were opened and the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus, like a pigeon.’
Anyhow — as I mentioned last week, Jesus baptism is one of the events that is typically covered here during the season of Epiphany — and I’m excited to talk about it because baptism is one of our core Christian symbols — and because led to a good deal of controversy throughout the history of the church. The timing to talk about baptism is also good, in that this month, on the 21st, is the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Anabaptist-Mennonite movement.
Today, we’ll talk first about Jesus’s baptism; what baptism meant in the 1500s and the origins of Anabaptism; and then we’ll close with some thoughts on what our baptisms mean for us today, both here at Daniel’s Run and as we interact with other Christians who hold tremendous diversity of views and practices around baptism.
1. Let’s start with Jesus’s baptism.
John, this wild man with unkempt hair and an extremely simple lifestyle, has gone down to the Jordan, a day or two walk from Jerusalem, and his preaching of need for repentance was proving very popular; so much so that both the city folks and the country people — both the winners and losers of the Roman colonization — were coming to him for baptism. Jesus decided to be baptized as well — and something significant happens — God’s favor towards Jesus is revealed.
In translating the Greek to English here, we struggle a bit: ‘heaven was opened’ sounds very passive — but the particular Greek verb tense used here is actually called by scholars ‘the divine passive:’ it is reserved for times when God acts directly in the world. This is accompanied with a second grammatical indication of divine activity: ‘there was a voice from heaven,’ is actually written in Greek here as ‘the daughter of a voice;’ a form only used when God speaks. So make no mistake — Jesus baptism clearly indicates that he is favored by God.
This is confirmed by what God says: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased;” this is a reference to Psalm 2, the coronation psalm. For centuries after King David, Psalm 2 was read as new Hebrew kings assumed the throne; for Jewish readers of Luke, God speaking these words over Jesus were tantamount to God proclaiming Jesus the messiah, the king.
What does all this mean for our understanding of Jesus, or our reading of Luke? Most importantly, it indicates that we should know Jesus as our king and Lord — as divinely inspired and blessed even as he begins his ministry — we need to take his life seriously.
This may seem like a no-brainer — but Christian history in the middle ages very much shunted aside Jesus’ life. The apostles creed, possibly the most important Christian creed in history, literally skips all of Jesus’ ministry: it reads — [he] “was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, and suffered under Pontius Pilate.”
Jesus’ baptism, among other things, indicates that this view of Jesus is not accurate: in the gospels Jesus is not just proclaimed messiah on the cross, but here, just as he set out to heal the sick, clothe the naked, overturn tables, and teach the way of God. When we think of Jesus, we need to remember his life — and when we’re baptized we need to seek to follow in Jesus footsteps of healing and hope.
We also need to remember that Jesus was not proclaimed king as a worldly king, in Jerusalem or Rome with much pomp and circumstance, but as a humble king, shivering in the waters of the Jordan alongside everyone else. He is baptized ‘after all the people were baptized’ — he didn’t come to John and demand he be baptized first with a big show; he came to be baptized humbly, entering into the traditional Jewish ritual of rebirth and cleansing — baptism.
Like with most Christian beliefs and practices, baptism has its roots in Jewish tradition, and we do well not to forget these roots. In Jesus’s day, the Jewish community, in accordance with the law of Moses, required full immersion in water for someone to become ritually clean; they needed to be clean to visit the temple, or synagogue, and really to participate in religious life at home as well. This is clearly the ritual that John is participating in and adapting here: he is baptizing Jews who are admitting that they’ve transgressed the laws of God and restoring them to cleanliness and full relationship with the community.
For Christians, rather than have baptism be something we do on a regular basis to restore ritual purity, baptism symbolizes the entrance into the community of faith, and this happens regularly to converts in the book of Acts. This too has its roots in Judaism; in fact, after the babylonian period, baptism was the final step for converts to Judaism from other religions.
In both Judaism and Christianity, however, there is significant diversity of understanding about this ritual: one popular Jewish school at the time of Jesus — and many people believe John was from this community — taught that one needed to be baptized each day; the biggest dividing line in Christianity around baptism, however, is around when baptism should occur: for children, or adults.
We’ll spend a fair amount of time on this question, because it is so central to the origin of Anabaptism. So, let’s turn now to Anabaptism.
2. Early Anabaptism
This next section is going to be pretty historical and academic…so, I actually want to start it with a quote from one of my favorite Pixar movies, the Incredibles. How many people have seen this movie?
In the movie world, where some people are born with superpowers but most people aren’t, the villain of the story is a non-super person who has invented really overpowered technology so that he can bring the superheroes down a peg. In his dramatic final monologue, he talks about selling his new weapons to the highest bidder, and eventually making sure everyone has access to them. And he says: “Because when everyone’s super — then no one will be.”
What does this have to do with baptism? Well, when the Anabaptist movement began, everyone in Europe was considered Christian; and when everyone’s Christian, no one is.
This gets at a core problem of the Christendom era in medieval Europe — when everyone on a continent, regardless of their actual beliefs, or lifestyles, or habits, or church attendance; regardless of how immoral they were, from stealing to killing to exploiting to pillaging and colonizing was considered Christian — then how could anyone be held accountable to actually try to follow the way of Jesus? Since everyone was baptized as a baby, preferably within a few days after being born, there was no choice or buy-in to being Christian; trying to live like Christ taught or lived wasn’t expected at all from the average “Christian.”
By the 14- and 15- hundreds, the church’s problems ran deep — the church was deeply enmeshed in worldly politics, and corruption was rampant; to achieve salvation one had to buy indulgences: essentially, pay up to your priest, or you’re going to hell. Also, tithes were enforced as a tax by the police, and the flat 10% structure was far more onerous for working people than for the rich. These things, among others, was what led to Martin Luther kicking off the reformation in 1517 by nailing 95 critiques, or theses, of the Catholic church to the door of the Wittenberg church.
Luther’s bravery opened the floodgates of religious reform across Europe — and at a time when the printing press was upending the church and states ability to censor knowledge, from the mundane to the spiritual.
We can’t underestimate how big a deal it was that ordinary people and parish priests could now read their bibles for themselves — the printing press led to an explosion in literacy, such that some of the church’s most important dogmas — which developed from tradition and were in direct contradiction to scripture — were quickly tossed aside by various Protestants who saw this contradiction: like indulgences, and the concept of purgatory, to name just two.
But the reformers were not all united; Luther’s criticism of church and society only went so far. When peasants in the southern German lands rose up against feudal systems — inspired by Luther, and quoting Jesus’s teaching about supporting the poor — Luther’s friends in high places compelled him to walk back some of his emphasis on the life and meaning of Jesus. Luther sided with the princes: he did not question the assumption that government and religion should go hand in hand, or that clergy should serve in a rigid hierarchy, or that the poor should stay poor. Other clergy, however, sided with the peasants against the system — and those who survived the failed uprising started reading Jesus’s instructions to love their enemies with fresh eyes, seriously considering if violent means could lead to non-violent ends.
Many of these reformers, who didn’t just want to reform the catholic church, but the whole system of Christendom — the church-state hybrid that left most people poor, sick and afraid — gathered around another reformer, in Switzerland: Ulrich Zwingli. At first it seemed Zwingli would agree that the church and state should separate, and perhaps even that baptism should be for believers rather than infants — but when the city council shot down these ideas, Zwingli too backed off from his most significant reforms. It was his students, then — Felix Manz, George Blaurach, Conrad Grebel, and others — who founded Anabaptism, by baptizing one another, with believers baptism, on the evening of January 21, 1525. Their faith compelled them to live faithfully — and all of those present that night would be killed for their beliefs within the five years.
So this brings us back to baptism: why was the insistence on baptising adults so taboo for other reformers, like Luther, Zwingli, when adults were regularly baptized in the biblical times?
While we’ll come to some theological reasons, we should start with a secular one: baptism, at the time, was tied to the government, and specifically to taxation. In that era, the vast majority of babies were born at home; but every baby baptized at a church was entered into the national record, and your baptismal certificate functioned the way a birth certificate does today. So, when reformers read their bibles and pointed out that all the baptisms in the new testament were by believing adults, and maybe we should try this too, this wasn’t just a theological critique: it threatened the state’s ability to tax its citizens.
While many other issues beside baptism — including economic justice, separation of church and state, freedom of religion, and rejection of the sword — set the Anabaptists apart from the various other churches, their opponents began calling them Anabaptists. Ana is the Greek root that means ‘again;’ aka, they were called Re-baptizers. Created as an insult, like often happens, this term that was meant to be an attack eventually became reclaimed by the movement — but always with the understanding that they were not really rebaptizing, when they baptized adults that had been baptized as infants, because they considered infant baptism invalid. By refusing to baptize infants, Anabaptists were a threat to both the state and the church’s domination of society, and thousands were exiled and killed in the following years.
But — if Jesus and the early church taught and practiced baptism as something for adults, why did the church in the middle ages and so many churches now believe in infant baptism?
Let’s look historically. Adult baptism was a bit of a no-brainer for the first Christians, because all of them converted from other religions as adults and thus had to be baptized as adults. Every baptism in the new testament is accompanied by the formula ‘repent, believe, and be baptized’ — and I don’t think babies can quite grasp the concept of repentance.
In the first centuries of the church, getting baptized was a long process — people who came to believe in Jesus typically had to study and worship with a church for upwards of a year until they could be baptized, traditionally at Easter.
But as the centuries wore on — and particularly after Emperor Constantine became a Christian — more and more people who didn’t want to go through this rigorous process wanted to become Christian; and what of children born in Christian families?
Baptism’s meaning became less and less significant over time, until its meaning changed: rather than being a ritual of repentance and personal choice to join the community of faith, it became much like the ritual of circumcision had in the Old Testament era — not a free choice and personal commitment to a life of following, but rather a ritual that parents enacted on behalf of their children.
Perhaps this is not too significant an error — of course we want to value our children, and teach them of our faiths — but baptizing them as infants because the secular government would like us to, and in contravalence of scripture’s example, I think significantly misses the mark, even if it is a long standing tradition of the church. While tradition is important and definitely helps us understand scripture, if we aren’t committed to living lives oriented towards the radical, inconvenient Jesus of the gospels, then we so often come to follow human tradition, making God in our own image.
Now, as we start thinking about how we live today, you’d be right to ask: Caleb, we don’t live in medieval Europe, thank goodness, and we live in a society that assumes freedom of religion; what does Anabaptism really bring to our context today?
Good question, theoretical congregation member!
Stuart Murray, author of the very popular The Naked Anabaptist, has a new book out last year, called The New Anabaptists, which works through 12 shared commitments identified as common threads in Anabaptist churches. I really appreciate Murray, as he didn’t grow up in the Anabaptist tradition, but discovered it from a scholarly perspective as an adult. Murray suggests that Anabaptists, being traditionally opposed to Christendom, are very well placed to witness to Jesus in our new secular and multi-religious world, as the percentage of Christians declines in many places around the world. Rather than defending the worst mistakes of Christian history — including colonialism and forced conversions — we can embrace these critiques as Jesus would, and continue to witnesses to the powers that be in the name of Jesus; witnessing to non-Christians and other Christians alike while resisting the coercive power of the state and following the footsteps of Jesus.
3. This brings us to our third topic of discussion today: how should we view baptism? How do we approach other Christians who still do baptize infants, or view the purpose of baptism totally differently than we do?
First off, we should acknowledge that we here at Daniel’s Run have had various journeys in relation to baptism. Sure, at some Mennonite churches you may find congregations where no one was baptized as an infant, but that is definitely not the case here; in fact, Pastor Tig was baptized as an infant, and isn’t here this Sunday because he’s attending the baptism of his little grandson — we all find our ways with our families! Pastor Tig was re-baptized as an adult when he joined the Mennonite church; he said: “I decided to be rebaptized in the Mennonite Church as a symbol of embracing my own faith as an adult, and also of my new commitment to be part of the Mennonite Church and its practice of believer’s baptism.”
So, while we do encourage believers’ baptism, the most important takeaway today, is, as in all things, to start with grace, curiosity, and freedom of conscience. I am a firm believer that diversity within the body of Christ is a good thing; and yes, while the Anabaptists stood for adult baptism, they also stood for respecting other’s consciences even to the point of respecting other faiths, something that was unheard of in medieval times.
A big reason I feel free to not worry so much about the timing of baptism today is that I do not believe salvation depends on if someone is baptized or not, at the right time or not. Now don’t get me wrong: this doesn’t mean I don’t think baptism isn’t important, I definitely think it is — but I don’t think it is scriptural in the slightest, nor does it match up with who God is, to believe that a baby that is not baptized is doomed to hell.
And, though I do freely share with other Christians that I think infant baptism does fairly seriously err in one of our most important rituals and decisions, this is not a place to hurl insults but instead a place to ask questions to fellow Christians, and witness to the truth that freedom of religion doesn’t just begin with people out there, but also with our children and families and loved ones. I believe we should never force our religion on anyone, because Jesus never did that — and, yes, we can lovingly support our children and witness to them about the importance of God in our lives without baptising them as babies, because regardless as if they are baptized as Children or not we cannot decide for them if they want to follow the way of Jesus. I want all Christians to follow Jesus because of their own convictions — not their parents.
I believe in believers baptism — that baptism is about choosing to commit to the way of Jesus, about turning away — repenting from — our sins and selfishness. Baptism is about rejecting our sins against ourselves, against, others, against nature, and against God, and committing to seek shalom with our lives, in word and in deed. In baptism we are reminded of God’s grace: we are forgiven and called beloved, just as Jesus was. Though the heavens may not open for us as they did for Jesus, baptism is a time when we come together as a community to forgive one another and bless those who choose to seek God, not the world; who choose to seek life over death; who choose to side with the poor and the needy over the haves of the world.
And indeed, this is a choice that we don’t just make once — at our baptisms hopefully we declare this publicly and solemnly, but it is a commitment we will only hold to, and make progress in, with the support of a community of other broken people stumbling towards God.
If you were baptized as an infant and are interested in celebrating believer’s baptism, this is something Pastor Tig and I would be happy to discuss with you; feel free to be in touch about it. Or, if you haven’t been baptized, let’s chat too; we’d love to explore baptism with you. While we at Daniel’s Run consider all Christians who have made personal commitments to the way of Jesus to be saved, regardless of when you were baptized, baptism remains important to us.
To close, I’d like to ask three questions that are often asked at Mennonite baptisms. You can also find them on the back of your bulletin, sorry I didn’t finalize this in time for the power point!
Do you renounce the evil powers of this world and turn to Jesus Christ as your savior and guide? “I do.”
Do you put your trust in Jesus’ grace and love, and promise to obey him as your Lord? “I do.”
Are you willing to give and receive counsel in this congregation and to participate in the mission of God’s Church? “I am.”
Let’s pray:
All-powerful God, as we remember our baptisms today, grant us the fullness of the Holy Spirit: a clean heart, a right spirit, and the joy of salvation. Make us ones in whom Christ is seen to live again. Empower us to use the gifts you gave us in creation, and have redeemed in Christ, that we may serve and glorify you.
May it be so. Amen.
